TELEVISION REVIEW; A Refugee's Loss of Innocence, A Lawyer's Loss of Ignorance

It is a pretty safe bet that a made-for-television movie about a persecuted Afghan woman's struggle for asylum in the United States is not going to dwell on the softer side of the Taliban regime.

Court TV's ''Chasing Freedom'' is a much better film than its didactic and perhaps predictable topic would suggest. The story is based on an actual Immigration and Naturalization Service case, but the film's creators resisted the temptation to punch up the plot with a invented romance or phony perils. Instead, ''Chasing Freedom'' follows two parallel themes: the Afghan refugee's loss of innocence and her American lawyer's loss of ignorance.

Juliette Lewis steals every scene as Libby Brock, a self-centered corporate lawyer who reluctantly takes on the case of 26-year-old Meena Gardizi (Layla Alizada) to fulfill her firm's pro bono obligation. Ms. Lewis is hypnotically grating as a callow, multitasking Type A lawyer who upbraids slow security guards and checks her e-mail messages during a moving speech by the head of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. When her supervisor at the Lawyers Committee urges her to take her commitment seriously and get her client to believe in her, she snaps back: ''Believe in me? Like, what, like I'm a religion?''

Ms. Lewis captures her character's arrogance and heedlessness, but also manages to signal an underlying layer of self-doubt. (It is also to the credit of the writers, however, that even as Libby grows emotionally and intellectually involved in Meena's cause, she never entirely sheds her annoying manner. At one point a harried African-American I.N.S. guard tells her off for her snooty attitude.)

Libby's grudging first steps on the case are juxtaposed with flashbacks of Meena's desperate moves to evade the Taliban. A university student until the Taliban took power, Meena starts an underground school for girls in her home, and when found out, she is jailed and beaten by Islamic fundamentalist police officers.

With the help of a brother and friends, Meena is sneaked across the border under a burka. (Ever mindful of Islamic fundamentalist niceties, the Taliban police at the checkpoint order a boy to peek under her voluminous tentlike veil to verify that she is in fact a Afghan woman.)

She makes it to the United States in the spring of 2001, only to find herself caught in the Catch-22 hidden beneath the Statue of Liberty: she destroyed her identity papers to escape persecution, but political asylum is not granted to aliens who cannot prove their identity.

The two women's lives intersect at a meeting in an I.N.S. detention center, then reverse course. While Libby begins to understand what Meena has lived through (in shock she watches an underground tape showing an Afghan woman being executed at a soccer stadium), Meena's spirits start to flag, and she grows increasingly disillusioned and depressed. She is still in detention when the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks happen, and her hopes for release fade even further.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

''I see my home,'' she tells Libby despondently after describing how Americans now mistrust Muslims. ''Suddenly here in America, I am watching Afghanistan.''

''Chasing Freedom,'' which was based on a case handled by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights and was made in collaboration with that organization, has an unimpeachable message.

But it is also a lawyers' story. One of the best scenes in the film occurs when Libby goes up against an I.N.S. lawyer (Gail Hanrahan) at a court hearing, confident that Meena's plight speaks for itself. The government lawyer rips Meena's claim that any contact with Meena's relatives in Afghanistan would put them at mortal risk.

''The Taliban seemed to know everything,'' she with studied sarcasm. ''And yet this is a country that, according to the background material provided by Ms. Brock, was pretty much back in the Stone Age. No infrastructure, no telephones, hardly any mail delivery, and yet the Taliban seem to be better organized than the F.B.I.''

Until Sept.11 most Americans probably would have shared that skepticism.

We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports,
and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

A version of this review appears in print on January 19, 2004, on Page E00001 of the National edition with the headline: TELEVISION REVIEW; A Refugee's Loss of Innocence, A Lawyer's Loss of Ignorance. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe